just the nauseating stench of flouro-antimonic acid slowly dissolving his brain matter.
The four warriors dived into the elevator; others would come quickly, attracted by the dying man’s screams, they had to get off this deck.
“Command centre!” Kallos barked out his order.
“Destination confirmed.” The elevator replied as the doors closed painfully slowly to the sight of three E.D. F soldiers sprinting around the corner of the corridor. Quickly seeing the dead naval officers, and then running towards the Kallan, their weapons rising, the doors fully closed, and the elevator rocketed the inhabitants at over three hundred miles per hour, to their destination.
“Reports of weapons fire; deck twenty one, two casualties near the elevator stop,” Maddox announced turning to Fontain; the commander looked worried.
“They’re going for the bridge, have all troops converge upon this room, arm yourselves.” Fontaine said, nervously brushing an errant strand of auburn hair from her gentle features.
“Already done, but it’s too late, the elevator has already reached this deck.”
Fontaine cursed under her breath, sometimes improvements in technology were not such an improvement after all.
The elevator doors opened out revealing three E.D. F troopers, weapons ready and at close range. The Dracos were far quicker, leaping gracefully through the air, somersaulting over the heads of the dumbfounded soldiers who desperately tried to track their movements with their weapons. Pulse rifle blasts tore into the walls and ceiling in a neat line following the Dracos’s leap. As the Kallan landed, they brought their wristblades down hard on their victims, cleaving through necks, and severing arteries with sickening ease, blood spurted out from the bodies. A vicious kick sent another careering to the ground before Kallos unleashed his silencer, the tiny metallic spike lodged perfectly into the doomed soldier’s throat, before the Kallan warrior casually retracted it, tearing the unfortunate victim’s neck to shreds within a split second.
They made it to the main entrance of the bridge, but found it sealed shut. Two more troopers came charging down the corridor towards them, quickly followed by others behind.
Two of the Dracos took up defensive positions, cornering either side of the ‘T’ junction that separated the bridge from the rest of the deck, and began laying down bursts of suppressive fire, causing the E.D. F troops attempting to overrun them to dive into cover themselves.
Kallos and Taneth both searched frantically for an air duct, maintenance hatch, anything they could use, as weapons fire began to pepper the walls all around them, they would be dead within minutes if they stayed here.
Finally, they found something, they were in luck, it was the opening to a small maintenance crawl space which ran directly to the bridge itself. If it wasn’t for Kallos switching to thermal view, and picking up the heat generated by a small bulkhead light on the other side of the concealed panel, they might never have found it.
Quickly they prised open the panel and dove inside, pulse rifle fire had torn deep blackened gouges into the wall around them. The other two Dracos continued to pour fire into the E.D. F troopers. Three of the soldiers lay dead in the centre of the corridor, riddled with eviscerator discs.
As these last two Dracos neared the entrance to the crawlspace under a withering hail of fire, one of them took a hit in the arm. The force of the impact flung him hard against the scorch marked wall; three more shots followed it up, two of which slammed straight into his chest armour, shattering the carbon fibre plate in a spray of black shards, the second tore straight into his stomach. The Dracos warrior fell clutching his weapon as he slowly passed away, propped against the corridor wall in a sitting position. Sightless eyes within his battlehelm looking upon his assailants, as they gradually began to break from cover.
With no time to seal the cramped, dingy, confined crawl space shut. The three remaining Kallan warriors shuffled along as fast as they physically could to the other end.
The E.D. F troops all swarmed towards the other open end of the tiny crawlspace, yet none dared venture inside for fear of being sliced to ribbons by the Kallan’s weapons.
Another panel blocked the exit from the crawlspace, which in total was no more than forty feet long, hampering Kallos’s access to the bridge itself. A heavy, swift kick soon removed the obstacle, causing it to fall away to one side with a loud clatter. He launched himself out of the tiny hatch, much to the astonishment of the bridge crew who believed their command centre was sealed.
To all intents and purposes, it was, except to the Dracos the tiniest crawlspace was a means of access.
Taneth was quickest off the mark, leaping over Kallos, and high into the air in an acrobatic flip, his wristblades outstretched, swinging his arm so fast it was barely visible as he quickly decapitated one of the bridge crew.
Kallos himself sprinted towards a console as the third Dracos warrior peppered the exposed crewmen with razor sharp eviscerator discs, three more fell clutching at bloodied ruined throats, torso’s torn apart, legs severed, making them easy pickings for the other two.
In total there were a dozen bridge crew, and they had accounted for four of them at a stroke, there were now eight left, it would be a tall order, but not impossible.
Kallos traded fire with a youngish looking male barking out incomprehensible orders to those around him. Taneth landed from his acrobatics neatly onto his feet, and followed this up by with a quick forearm strike to another. The lethally sharp blades sliced deep into the man’s face, he fell back screaming, before the Kallan warrior leapt into the air again, adopting a textbook Dracos close combat technique.
Kallos finally dispatched his opponent with a series of well placed shots from his eviscerator pistol, two in the shoulder and a third in the forehead ensured he would travel the hereafter.
The third and final Dracos warrior was darting from smashed console to smashed console, trying to get behind the now pinned crewmen in order to set up a triangular killing field with the other two.
A red haired female was firing back from cover, she was a surprisingly good shot, and one slammed into Kallos’s shoulder, blasting apart a fair sized chunk of carbon fibre plate, his pale arm was now exposed and bleeding, the warrior cursed vehemently in his native tongue as he skulked behind cover.
Taneth landed gracefully near the far corner of the circular bridge at Kallos’s right, calmly he put two eviscerator rounds into the back of the head of a male, before taking cover himself.
“Taneth, diversion leap,” Kallos spoke into a communicator built into the side of his battlehelm, a silent nod confirmed he had understood the order, then popped up to spray the surviving naval officers with a burst of eviscerator rounds.
There were now five left, all in a cluster, defending their captain directly ahead of Kallos’s position. The diversion leap was a risky, yet necessary Dracos technique, used to get in close amongst small clusters of enemy troops like this. One would leap high through the air, all the while firing upon their enemy in order to get them to keep their heads down, while at virtually the exact same time a second Dracos would leap into the air straight at them. The resulting melee was often brief and bloody. It was an incredibly hard manoeuvre to pull off successfully though, requiring exact timing, this was why it was one of the most advanced of all combat techniques taught to the Kallan.
“Go!”
Taneth bounded into the air with an immense jump, almost hitting the ceiling. He began pumping fire into the small group as he passed by overhead, catching one in the chest and sending him staggering back crashing into the ships viewscreen. Kallos then leapt straight for the beleaguered group, his and Taneth’s bodies missed one another by mere inches, as he landed neatly in-amongst them, sending one sprawling across the ground as his feet slammed into him.
The two who had been knocked out of the cluster were now right in the firing line of the third Dracos, who gunned them both down mercilessly.
The resulting combat was over in seconds as Kallos tore open the throat of one, while simultaneously spin kicking another.
The female captain broke free, running headlong toward a still intact console smeared with the blood of a crewmate. She frantically stabbed at a control and spoke into the console, all she managed to say was, “all hands, this is Fontaine, abandon shi….”
Three eviscerator discs sliced through her neck, Commander Erica Fontaine’s head gradually separated from her body and bounced off the console she was using, her body collapsed onto the hard deck plating in a spray of deep crimson blood.
